Posted 4 years ago on Sept. 9, 2012, 7:45 p.m. EST by DemandTheGoodLifeDotCom
(3360)
from New York, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

FREEDOM OF CHOICE WORKS, MONOPOLIES DO NOT

The reason why the economy does not work is because it is completely unaccountable to the people who live in it. We have just one system that everyone is forced to live in whether it works for you or not. If you don't like what we have, too bad. There is nothing you can do about it. The likelihood of you changing society is close to zero.

The status quo has a monopoly over society and monopolies never work because they leave people with no recourse. There are no alternatives. So they are completely unaccountable.

What does work is freedom of choice.

Instead of having one monolithic system that everyone is forced to live in, what we should have are multiple systems for people to choose from.

The Right, Left and Center should each get their own economic system and these systems should compete against each other for your membership.

So if you want Left economic policies, now all you need to do is join the Left Economic Plan. You no longer have to convince the Right to adopt Left policies.

And if you don't like the results of the economy you are participating in, now you can do something about it. All you have to do is quit the system you are participating in and sign up to one of the competing alternatives. You don't have to start an OWS protest movement, you don't have to elect a new President, you don't have to change Congress, and you don't have to get new laws enacted.

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MULTIPLE ECONOMIC SYSTEMS

Having multiple economic systems would work similar to the way medical insurance plans work.

Each business will decide which Economic Plan they want to join. And then each Economic Plan would compete against each other for your membership. You will decide which Economic Plan you want to participate in. And when you sign up to an Economic Plan, you will work and shop at the companies that are part of your Economic Plan, just like how you visit doctors and medical facilities that are part of your medical insurance plan.

Just like we can have different medical insurance plans that compete against each other in the same geographical location, we can have different economic plans that compete against each other in the same geographical location.

Initially, all cities would be a mix of all plans. So if you chose the Right Plan, you might live next door to a neighbor who chose the Left Plan. And the companies in the city would be a mix of Right, Center and Left Plan businesses.

But this does have some drawbacks since each plan would then have to share common economic infrastructure like roads, water and police. So some future cities would likely be developed that were exclusive to one plan so that even the infrastructure was delivered according to that particular plan.

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IMPLEMENTING

To enact this idea, we would get the federal government to 1) set the rules for starting an Economic Plan, 2) give each Plan its own central bank, 3) give each Plan ownership of a share of our current government run organizations (if a Plan gets 30% of the population to join, it will get ownership of 30% of our public schools, hospitals, fire, sanitation, parks, etc.), and 4) give each Plan access to its share of our country's natural resources.

The federal government would then get out of the economy entirely. It would now only provide a common justice system that protects life and property and enforces contracts.

The rules for starting a new Economic Plan can be simple. You would just have to demonstrate that there are enough people that want to join, perhaps by having a national ballot initiative. What is key is having enough people to support an entire economy. In order for the economy to operate according to its own policies, it needs to be independent. It needs to produce nearly all of its own goods and services. So it needs enough workers to do that, which means it will need to get roughly 10-20% of the population to want to join its Plan.

Given this requirement to have a minimum amount of participants, there would likely be 3 different Economic Plans offered.

The Right Plan would be a network of companies managed according to the Republican Party platform. All the companies in this plan would be privately owned, there would be minimal regulations and taxes, and the market would allocate everything including school, medicine and retirement.

The Center Plan would be a network of both privately and publicly owned companies managed according to the Democrat Party platform. There would be high regulations, high taxes and enough welfare to make sure everyone was at least getting the basics.

The Left Plan, described here, would be a network of companies that were all publicly owned. Income would be allocated in an egalitarian way since all Plan members would be equal owners in the Plan's companies and there would be no welfare since allocating income more equally would pay everyone a high enough income to make everyone wealthy.

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CENTRAL BANK

Each Plan will also get its own central bank so that it can manage its own money supply. Having its own central bank with an ability to issue its own money is necessary in getting a new Plan off the ground.

For example, if 60 million people decide to join the Left Plan, that is a market of 60 million customers and workers. If no companies join that Plan to serve those 60 million workers and customers, its central bank will provide those 60 million with the investment money they need to create enough new companies to produce enough goods and services to meet the demand of these 60 million new customers.

This investment, of course, will come as an expense to the other systems, but it should. They just lost 60 million customers.

Since the Left Plan will likely get very few current private companies to join its Plan, it will likely only start out with its share of current government-run companies (like fire, police, schools, hospitals, etc.). It will need to build up roughly 70% of its economy.

So the Left Plan in its early stages will likely devote a larger percentage of its GDP to investment than it would normally since it will need to buy lots of existing businesses and launch lots of new ones.

For example, if no restaurants join the Left Plan, the Left Plan's central bank will issue loans to its members so they can launch enough restaurants to meet their demand for dining out.

If the Left Plan got 30% of the population to join, the economies of the other Plans will shrink by 30%. Many companies will no longer be viable in those systems. The Left Plan would then be able to buy a lot of these companies in bankruptcy.

So the revenue for the restaurants in the other Plans will shrink by 30%, causing roughly 30% of them to face bankruptcy. Those failing restaurants can then decide to join the Left Plan or members of the Left Plan can buy these restaurants in bankruptcy.

Plus, those economies also lost 30% of its workers. The companies that used to employ those people may have no choice but to go with the Left Plan since they no longer have any workers.

Certainly there will be considerable disruption when this is first implemented. But the disruption will mostly be with company ownership and workers joining new companies. There should not be much disruption in actual production.

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EVERYONE WINS

This is the only rational, sensible way to organize society. Everyone wins. The Right gets what they want. The Center gets what they want. And the Left gets what they want.

Forcing Republicans to live in a Democrat system or vice versa serves no useful purpose whatsoever. It is tyrannical and just causes conflict.

Monopolies do not work. Freedom of choice and competition works.

When we adopt this, nearly all of society's problems will come to an end. There will be no unemployment or poverty or financial struggle, which are the root cause of nearly every problem in society. Because when a Plan has to actually compete against other Plans for your membership, that competition will force them to make sure their system truly delivers the highest standard of living for its members.

Nobody will stay with a Plan that they think is unfair or is making them poor or that they cannot find a job in.

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THIS CAN BE ENACTED

Since most people are currently not getting what they want, and most people never will get their ideal society, I think it would be very easy to get most people to back this plan. Because this finally enables them to get the ideal society they want.

So we should be able to build a large enough coalition to get this idea implemented.

I believe the idea is workable, I believe it will solve nearly all of society's problems and I believe we can get enough people to go along since most people are not currently getting what they want.

When you ask any right-wing republican, libertarian, green, socialist, or progressive (who will most likely never get the economic system they want) would they allow others to get the economic system they want in exchange for you getting exactly what you want, most people will say that is fair and will take that deal.

To help wrap your head around the idea, all we are doing is dividing the economy up into 3 different groups of companies and each company can decide which group they want to join.

Every good and service we produce has far more than 3 different versions. So some will join one group and others will join some of the other groups. For example, in fast food restaurants, Burger King may join the Republican group, McDonald's may join the Democrat group and Wendy's may join the Public group.

So each economic plan will continue to operate just like the economy operates now, the only difference is that you will do most of your shopping at companies that belong to the economic plan you joined.

If you joined the Democrat plan, you would eat McDonald's as your fast food instead of Burger King.

Ideally, if a plan gets, say, 20% of the population, it should then get 20% of the companies in each product category. So ideally, it would get 20% of all the fast food companies, 20% of the cell phone companies, 20% of the furniture companies, etc.

However, it will obviously not work out so perfectly in that way. For example, the public plan may not get any private companies to join its plan at all.

So the plan that has a shortage of companies will have its central bank issue money for investment, just like we did when we did Quantitative Easing (QE1 and QE2) during the recession, and buy the companies it needs or launch new ones.

Lame, poorly thought out idea. All the companies except maybe Ben and Jerrys will join the system with the lowest income/corporate tax rates, the Right or Republican system. And the Central Bank of the Democrat plan will have worthless money and no "Right" business will accept money from a "Left" group that simply prints it.

Lame, poorly thought out response since the issue you bring up is clearly addressed in the comment you are responding to.

If 100% of the businesses join the system with only 30% of the workers and 30% of the customers, roughly 70% of those businesses are going to go bankrupt.

A lot of those bankrupt assets will be bought by the 70% who now reside in the other systems.

So workers and consumers will dictate where businesses will ultimately go by them deciding what Plans they join. If 70% of the workers and consumers join the non-Right Plan, they eventually will have 70% of the businesses.

EVERYONE will go to the ""RIGHT" system. EVERYONE. The whole idea of leftist ideology is to get "other" people to pay for their leftist ideas. People will have to be militarily forced into the leftist camps.

People today can do exactly what you have laid out. Just give lots more of your income voluntarily to the government and voluntarily fund social programs. If your idea was coherent, we would see leftists as extremely charitable and we would see them willingly funding abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood, and Soup Kitchens. The sad truth ( and dont bother denying it) is that leftist are absolute cheapskates when it comes to charity, and conservatives fund charities 300% more than leftist skinflints.

Let's assume for a moment that is true. Shouldn't they have a right to live in a Right system? If everyone wants that, why should anyone be forced to live in a Center or Left system?

The whole point of this post is that people should have the freedom to participate in the economic system they want.

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However, your claim that everyone will choose the Right system is simply not true. Why isn't everyone then voting for Right candidates?

If nobody wants to live in a Democrat society, why are 50 million people voting for Democrat candidates?

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What I predict is the exact opposite of what you predict. I predict that a Right system would never survive. You would only have a Left and Center system.

In a Right system, most of the income goes to a small handful of people who got lucky in the market like entrepreneurs and investors and a small handful of people who have bargaining power merely because they are unique like athletes and celebrities.

The vast majority of the workers who produce everything, the engineers, construction workers, factory floor workers, doctors, miners, farmers, teachers, they get a very, very bad deal in a Right system.

So they would all choose the Left system. In a Left system, you are paid based on how hard you work, not based on how lucky or unique you are. As explained here, allocating income that way would pay workers roughly $115k to $460k which is significantly more than what they would get in a Right system where most the income is paid to the lucky and unique few.

In order to compete with that, the Right system would have to become like a Democrat system where there is a lot of redistribution of income.

Your point: "The federal government would now only provide a common justice system that protects life and property and enforces contracts. It would get out of the economy entirely." My comment: I am all for this.

Your points: "The government would also officially charter all economic plans. If there are enough people that want a particular system, enough to support an entire economy (which would probably be roughly 10-20% of the population), the government would then authorize that plan by chartering a central bank for it. Each Plan will get its own central bank and can even issue its own branded money." My Comment: Getting the Government "out of the economy entirely" doesn't require them to sanction the economic activities of any citizen. We charter the Government to leave innocent citizens alone but to step in when and only when any citizen violates life, liberty or property of any other citizen. As to Banking, each citizen is free to bank where he chooses and just like a local, criminal counterfeiter, no banker (whether local or international) is immune from the consequences of counterfeiting a depositor's money. I'll gladly pay money for a government like that.

Below, hoot asked about environmental issues. I believe that the government who's sole charter is to protect a citizen's life, liberty and property can not charter a bank. Money and banking are up to each citizen and the voluntary choices each makes with every other citizen that they deal with. The point is that by getting politics out of money and money out of politics will go further in protecting the environment than anything. (For example, see the housing bubble and the wars in the last 50 years for what happens to mother nature when we allow our money to be counterfeited.)

Three Parts to your idea or four?
Freedom of the individual to live his own life for his own purposes is morally correct. An individual's obligation simply is to respect the same in every individual. Citizens aligning their Government to protect each individual's right to life, liberty and property is politically correct.

As to the poor, the reformation centered on individual liberty will revitalize people. Many of the poor will work themselves into better and better lives. My Great Grandfather used to criticize us saying, "You kids in your generation are not nearly as empathetic or compassionate as we were in our generation." And he'd ask, "Why is that?" I'd say that free people will be compassionate once unshackled from the cronies who rule banking, education, business and politics. With the reformation, what's left of the poor will be taken care of by truly free people better than any government ever could.

Slavery is a downward spiral. When the full force and weight of corrupt laws face the innocent, the innocent hang their heads and accept them. They don't have to be literally in chains. Some say f_ck it and find ways to make corruption work for them. Life for them turns into dog eat dog, the haves and the have nots. Race becomes a rallying cry and racism just more dog eat dog. They are no longer the innocent. They become part of the great and inhumane monolith regardless of whether it manifests as 1% rules, Right, Left or Moderates rule, might makes right rules, race rules, or God rules. Freedom goes in the opposite direction. When individuals are motivated to live their own lives for their own purposes and recognize that in order to do that they have to respect the same in others and when their laws are strictly based on protecting them from those who would forcibly deny them, then equal under the law has meaning and justice has meaning. Individual liberty is the most naturally human thing in the world. Most of us don't accept it. Either we never acknowledged it, were brainwashed out of it, or we because don't trust ourselves to live it consistently. But there are still those who do and as such want to break up the monolith by rallying and fighting for individual freedom. It is the right thing to do because it is humane. From that, the pursuit of happiness becomes fun and living becomes peaceful and prosperous. I don't believe that the Right is motivated by this; I don't believe that the Left is either. The Moderates knowingly or unknowingly appease both sides. As to splitting our world into three parts, you are thinking "out of the box". I do believe that there is a fourth camp- those who want to live their own lives and who will respect any person doing the same. They want to charter their government to protect that. These people don't want to be enslaved nor be slave masters.

As to logistics, are you proposing a great migration? The Left live over here; the Right over there and the Moderates here and there? The devil's in the details. Where would free people live?

I have a question. If there are three separate, competing economies spread throughout the country, and I am in a state that chooses the right plan by a large margin, how would I be able to participate in a center or left economy? What about retirement? No longer working means no longer being paid. Would a retirement plan be part of the cost of doing business, such as an insurance policy? How would the insurer of such a plan make money to pay off claims? Or, does a person continue to be paid a percentage of the money earned over time? What would stop a person from accumulating a bunch of cash in one economy and then switching to another economy to invest it and earn money on money?

"I am in a state that chooses the right plan by a large margin, how would I be able to participate in a center or left economy?"

We will never run out of work to do. So the Left plan would invest whatever is necessary to fully employ everyone who wants to work within it. You would be offered a job. It doesn't matter if everyone else participated in an alternative.

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"What about retirement? No longer working means no longer being paid."

The Right would say you are on your own. If you didn't save enough, too bad. Starve.

The Left would have a pension that paid you a living wage (not social security) for the rest of your life. The Center may have something similar.

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" Would a retirement plan be part of the cost of doing business, such as an insurance policy?"

Yes. On the Left, that cost would be shared by every company as a tax on their income.

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"How would the insurer of such a plan make money to pay off claims?"

There would be no insurance company. We would just establish what a living wage is. Multiply that by the amount of people who are retired. Then divide that by GDP to determine what the tax rate is to pay for that year's pension.

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"What would stop a person from accumulating a bunch of cash in one economy and then switching to another economy to invest it and earn money on money?"

There were several postings on this subject, and I have asked other questions elsewhere. Are you convinced there would be no unemployment, and is that because adjustments would be made among the members when a company cuts back? Also, the retirement tax would be on every individual or on each company? Would it be invested or just put in a savings account? Would the Left have any kind of investment opportunity for individuals to increase their nest egg? Which GDP would you use to calculate the retirement? A straight gross domestic product, no matter how it is achieved, or would we take into account the value of the health and welfare of the people? The questions I asked in other posts relate to money and dealing internationally. I will wait until you see them, rather than spell them out again.

"Are you convinced there would be no unemployment, and is that because adjustments would be made among the members when a company cuts back?"

Every company will be trying to get rid of as many of their workers as possible. That increases efficiency and is how we increase wealth.

If you have a job picking apples and we develop a machine that replaces you, you can now do a new job, for example, picking oranges. Now for the same amount of labor we are able to pick both apples and oranges. We have increased our wealth.

Since we will never run out of new projects to pursue or new goods and services to produce, we will never run out of the need for labor. So the fed will just invest whatever is necessary to launch enough new companies or expand existing ones to hire all the people who are unemployed.

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"Also, the retirement tax would be on every individual or on each company?"

Whether it is paid by the company or the individual doesn't matter.

If your income is $100k, and a 10% tax is needed to pay the pension incomes, we could tax the company and just pay you $90k or pay you $100k and tax you $10k.

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"Would it be invested or just put in a savings account?"

It would get paid to you as income. You can save it or spend it.

In the Left system that I advocate, you cannot get paid an investment income. You can only get paid an income (pre-tax income) from working. So you would not be able to make any investments.

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"Would the Left have any kind of investment opportunity for individuals to increase their nest egg?"

You can certainly save as much money for retirement as you want. But you would not be able to get paid an investment income.

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"Which GDP would you use to calculate the retirement?"

GDP is the total price of all the goods and services we produce. It would be based on that number. So you would get a percentage of the goods and services we produce.

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"A straight gross domestic product, no matter how it is achieved, or would we take into account the value of the health and welfare of the people?"

What we produce is determined by what consumers buy. If what a consumer buys is not making them healthy, they are free to buy something else.

Who is levying the tax -- who is "we". The reference to gnp is to the idea that the production of some products damages the environment or causes cancer. This adds to the medical aspect of the gnp, but it certainly does not add to the health of the people. I am guessing you are thinking all the employee owned companies would never pollute or create something that causes cancer, so in the Left Option, everything produced would be good for us because we would not have to seek profit at the risk of our own well being. Some European countries calculate the GDP to include social values as well as monetary ones.

How income is allocated is democratically determined by the people participating in the left system.

The best place to get all the details on how the system works is in a post you can access by clicking here.

All countries have agreed to calculate GDP the same way so that economic data can be compared between countries. European countries do not calculate GDP differently.

All production damages and pollutes the environment. Of course, these companies will still be regulated for safety. However, if people want to consume unhealthy products, we should not ban it. We should do everything to encourage a healthy lifestyle and people should pay more towards healthcare who live unhealthy lifestyles, but I do not think we should make unhealthy living illegal.

Being able to treat the sick is just as valuable as being able to produce better cars or anything else. I would not look to GDP for clues as to the state of health of a society. Instead, look for incidence rates of disease.

The federal government would not disband. It will just now only provide a common justice system that protects life and property and enforces contracts. It would get out of the economy entirely.

The government would also officially charter all economic plans. If there are enough people that want a particular system, enough to support an entire economy (which would probably be roughly 10-20% of the population), the government would then authorize that plan by chartering a central bank for it.

Each Plan will get its own central bank and can even issue its own branded money.

Each Plan will also be governed by its own democratic body that sets its economic policies. The Plan can decide how that democratic process will work. It may have a representative democracy or a direct democracy.

So each Plan will form its own government and will decide how that government works. However, that government will only deal with economic issues.

And that government can decide, for example, that it will not have a central bank at all and that they will go back to the days where each bank issued its own money and you had thousands of competing monies.

The problem with having one monolithic system like we have now is that in order to make a change, you have to get 310 million people who subscribe to different ideologies to agree with you. That is impossible which is why nothing ever changes.

This is the reason why environmental changes have come so slowly. But if the republicans get their own system, then you could very realistically get the Democrat Plan and the Public Plan to adopt environment friendly policies because most of the members of these plans will likely believe in global warming and will care about the environment.

Each Economic Plan will have its own elected governing body. But the only ones voting in their elections are the ones who are members of the plan. So you will likely get environment friendly candidates elected in the Democrat Plan and Public Plan that will make aggressive changes to the economy to make it more green that you will never get elected in today's system.

okay i accept that in the democratic and public plan environmental issues will be resolved well. But Lets use hydro fracking as an example, lets say in the republican plan the voters are fine with hydro fracking (for argument sake) wouldn't all oil businesses start producing in the states which are republican? Furthermore wouldn't hydro fracking in these states affect the democratic and public planned states? Is this a necessary evil or can it be resolved?

Yes, trying and experimenting with new ways of doing things is the heart of the scientific method. It is how we progress and improve.

Saying there is only one way to organize society without testing alternatives is dogmatic and unscientific.

So people should have alternatives to choose from. This is what this idea enables us to do. And if there is a minimum amount of people who want a new kind of system, the federal government should officially charter that system and give it its own central bank.

Without your own central bank, the alternative systems will never be able to get off the ground.

If 40% of the workers join a system and that system only gets 10% of the businesses, they will only have a quarter of the businesses they need. Where are they going to get the money to fund 75% of its economy?

And why should the people from the Left have any say over how the people from the Right manage their monetary system or vice versa?

One benefit of a central bank would be a common currency for traveling abroad, presuming this system is not international.
Also, which currency would the federal government use internationally?
How long would Social Security have to be paid out? Would these programs be transferred to the chosen economy as part of the Central Bank for that economy?
It also seems that the value of the dollar (for want of a better term) would be different among the three currencies, especially if based on something other than GDP. The current GDP basis is not good socially, really, because it fails to take into account the poor healthcare, damage to the economy, etc. that results from the "gross domestic product" measure alone; if that measure were revised to include health and welfare of the citizens, level of employment, amount people earn for their work -- then a clearer picture of the true economic status would emerge.
Which economy would be most likely to have global influence? If the international marketplace is not part of the structure, would that not tip the scales in favor of the high profit, low wage setup we have now? Say 40% of the companies do choose Option R. They manufacture and sell in China, India, Mexico, etc., so virtually no working people in the U.S. join that economy. That would leave the entire domestic population to choose from the other two. If 40% of the businesses are not producing for domestic consumption, would there be enough people and available funds to replace those businesses twice, really? Would each economy have to establish its own trade regulations to avoid flooding the market with cheap goods (from Option R, mostly)?
Each economy would have its own elected officials -- does this mean in place of a state and federal government, or merely electing officials for the current governing bodies - or some combination?
Earlier I asked about unemployment and retirement in Option L. Even with workers receiving 100% of the profits in salaries, and only working 20 hours a week, would there be enough jobs to employ everyone who wants to work? Would there be a "social" wealth that also pays people for anything they do to improve the world around them, such as going to school, creative endeavors -- i.e., "Public Services and Contributions" would be a kind of governmental business, as it were, which pays firemen, police, students, teachers, etc. but where would those dollars come from? Or, would those become employee owned businesses like any other that charge for their services when needed. If each worker earns a minimum of 100,000 a year, and the money they borrow is interest-free, then I'm thinking their retirement would simply be a savings account; it seems there would have to be limits as to what one can "move" from one economy to the next. Say, I earn 100,000 a year in Economy L, and save half of it. What would prevent me from taking some of that savings and investing it in Economy R for profit. This rambles. I'll stop now.
As you can see, I am intrigued by your idea. I am asking all of these questions because I am planning to include it in my screenplay -- It may be the piece I needed to segue from what we have now to a kinder, gentler world. :)

So isn't that then a great deal for all the hard working people of the Right? You no longer have to carry around all that dead weight. The people on the Right pay a lot of taxes to support these people.

I'm curious about your concept of "human nature". If it were human nature to be lazy, we would all be in caves. In a culture that propagandizes instead of teaching, values form over substance, and creates a society that must work at any job they can find for 40 hours a week to maybe pay the rent -- in other words, a society dismissive of its people -- it's no surprise that they don't want to work at something they hate for no benefit. Unemployment insurance pays them not to work -- but it isn't that unemployment is too high, it is that wages are way, way, way too low.

Socialism pays you based on how hard you work. So lazy, less motivated people are not going to benefit from a socialist system.

However, the Right system gives you plenty of opportunity to make tons of money even if you are lazy. If you are born into a wealthy family, you don't have to work a day in your life. Or if you get lucky in the market, you could work for a few years and then retire on a $20 million salary like Mitt Romney without ever having to work again.

Socialism is defined in the Merriam Webster dictionary as, "a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done."

Karl Marx in Critique of the Gotha Program wrote, "Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society - after the deductions have been made - exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor."

Socialism is a worker movement against capitalism because workers get a bad deal in capitalism. I explain what socialism is in this post and in this post.

Socialism claims that there are two primary problems with capitalism that make it unfair.

One, capitalism allows investors, people who don't work, to take a significant portion of the product that the workers are producing. Even though workers are responsible for 100% of the production, they only get 50% of the income. Half the income is paid to investors.

Investment income is just welfare for the lucky. It allows people like Mitt Romney to get paid $20 million per year without working a single day merely because he got lucky in the market. Workers produce that $20 million every year, not Mitt Romney.

Investing is gambling. The economy should not be used as a casino. Workers shouldn't have to work 6 months every year just to pay off the gambling winnings of investors.

And two, the income that is paid to workers is paid based on how much bargaining power you wield in the market, not based on how much you produce. This allows the few with bargaining power (because they are unique like athletes and celebrities) to use their bargaining power to take far more income than they deserve and produced which means everyone else who are not unique and have no bargaining power are being exploited because they are then getting paid far less than they deserve and produced.

Socialists claim this is unfair. What is fair is workers should get paid 100% of the income since they are doing 100% of the work and they should get paid based on how much you produce. To do that, you have to limit differences in income between workers to only what is necessary to get them to do undesirable jobs and to give their maximum performance in performance based jobs.

If you and I both work 40 hours, we should get paid the same. The only justification for you getting paid more than me is if you worked a more difficult job or if we worked in a performance based job and you performed better than I did.

It didnt work in the USSR, ( I know, I know, the USSR was a backward country with no social structure, i know you will answer with that) but you have to answer why after SEVENTY YEARS, they discarded it. They werent so backward that the built rockets and orbited the earth.

Socialism failed in Russia after 3 generations. 70 years is plenty if time to iron out the kinks and get it right. They couldnt because of human nature.

Whether it was a dictatorship or not, (and it wasnt a dictatorship anyways, that isnt true, it was run by the Communist party), doesnt explain why it couldnt feed itself. You can argue all the progressive hogwash about socialism you want, but it remains that a highly industrial, highly educated socialized country with tons of resources couldnt feed itself. I repeat, "couldnt feed itself!"

You are being gullible if you think what makes an economy socialist is merely calling it socialist.

Do you think North Korea is a democracy? It is, after all, called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Of course, North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship, not a democracy. And the USSR was also a totalitarian dictatorship that ruled through terror, it was not socialist.

The Soviet Union had little transparency and little accountability. It was run on propaganda, not facts. If you disagreed with leadership, you were shot. No economic system can work under those circumstances.

Socialism is an economic system run by workers democratically. It is not an economic system run by an evil dictator who murders anyone who disagrees with him.

Russia did have a socialist revolution. But the revolution was hijacked by military people who were interested in ruling the world, not creating socialism.

So many of the original revolutionaries actually left Russia. In fact, one of the leaders of the revolution, Trotsky, was so vocal about Russia no longer being socialist that he was thrown out of the country and eventually murdered by Stalin.

Also, all the major socialist organizations throughout the world denounced the Soviet Union for not being socialist.

However, the Soviet Union was not capitalist and so they were able to make significant economic gains despite its corrupt political system. It developed faster than any country in history. It had more doctors per capita than the West, it had a higher literacy rate than the West, it cut infant mortality in half, and life expectancy was higher than the world average.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the return of capitalism, life expectancy is now lower than the world average, 25% now live below subsistence, its suicide rate has doubled and its GDP did not grow for 15 years.

Also, the people did not discard socialism. They did not want capitalism, they just wanted to get rid of its corrupt, totalitarian political system.

You are not getting it. You don't need welfare or income redistribution in socialism.

Socialism is a system where workers get paid in full. They don't lose half their income to a few lucky investors and then most of what's left over to a few lucky enough to have bargaining power in bargaining for income because they are unique.

When workers are a paid in full, and paid based on how hard you work, they will get paid roughly $115,000 to $460,000 per year as explained here.

You don't need welfare when you are guaranteed a job that pays at least $115k. Workers still have to pay taxes and some of those taxes will go to pay for the disabled and retired.

You are free to do whatever you want. You can die of starvation, beg friends, family or strangers for handouts, or get a job. But nobody is going to force you to work.

You can live off a small fraction of $115k, so you would only have to work a couple of hours per week to survive. I doubt there are people that are so lazy that they would rather die than work a couple of hours per week.

While I agree that America will never attain sufficient homogeneity, I think your plan falls far short. What we need are five separate countries, labeled - Black, Hispanic, Left, Center, and Right. Then we can go to war to expand territorial boundaries and, if necessary, settle once and for all all ideological differences.

Just think - we'd be so busy fighting each other we'd never have time for the Middle East. And no one would ever have to ask, what are we fighting for?

A tribute? In what context? Do you have a dictionary handy so you can explain this to me?

In any case, that's the point - as five separate countries no one can dictate the behavior of another. In the conservative nation, no praise or recognition will be necessary - those people don't mind a little sweat on their brow and they WILL fight to the death.

Listen, we live in a country in which some of our most prestigious educational institutions would rather indoctrinate young people with classes designed around televisions shows such as the fiction of "The Wire" than teach a factual American history.

We live in a country where the white middle class majority is now expected to contribute to the full support of the black and brown, who, ever since the Million Man March have essentially decided that employment or anything that resembles work is but a white man's fantasy in the form of slavery. We're tired of it, and we want our own country.

That's not a prejudicial statement; it's not "racist" - it's personal preference ... this is our vision of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The tribute was a reference to the movie the Hunger Games where each colony had to send a person to fight against each other to the death in a yearly televised game as a tribute.

Saying all black people don't want to work because they think it is slavery is prejudicial.

And saying you want to divide people based on race is being a racist. Your personal preference is to be a racist.

I think people should have a choice between economic plans just like they have a choice between cell phone plans. Choice and competition works. Monopolies do not. Monopolies leave people with no recourse. So they are completely unaccountable.

That has nothing to do with race or dividing the country based on race. Everyone should live together. The color of a person's skin has nothing to do with their desire to work or anything else. We should foster a culture where people get along, not one where people are divided.

In any plan, wouldn't it's citizens countenance one monopoly- the charter of their government? For example, in a free Plan based on the individual as sovereign, its members would delegate to their government one limited course of action, namely protecting the citizens right to act unencumbered by anyone (in the free Plan) who would forcibly deny that right. In a DMS Plan based on the society as sovereign, its members would charter a government to assure that no one owned property but when working would receive 100% of the income from the companies that they work in. In a moderate Plan based on a mix of the two, I am guessing that its citizens would charter their government to act as Solomon.

A monopoly means you only have one choice. That is what we have now. We have one economic system that has a monopoly over our economy. You have zero alternatives.

If we had 3 economic systems, it would no longer be a monopoly. You would have a choice. If the Right Plan was not working for you, you would have the option of leaving that Plan and joining either the Left or Center Plan.

We, too, as middle class America, want "equality" and the right to chose an economic plan. And since our differences quite obviously cannot be resolved we have opted for the above. And these things are already happening - America is polarizing. Because we're tired of this 50 year public debate that has resolved nothing; it has only served to exasperate all divides - geez, forty years and they haven't even resolved the issue of oil import dependency.

Throughout this entire time period, I have never before seen a Federal government that has so abused the revenue derived of the American working and middle class.